


Raiders of the Lost Temple of Fluthlu

by cthchewy (pyrrhic_victoly)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, For Science!, Gen, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, tomb raiding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3103457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victoly/pseuds/cthchewy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two adventurers meet and have adventures.  Blue babes are mentioned in passing.  Regrettable(?) things are done in the name of tomb raiding for science.  A marriage happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raiders of the Lost Temple of Fluthlu

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Megan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megan/gifts).



**Jake: Tend to your wounds**

That is CAPTAIN ENGLISH to the good sirs and madams, you think to yourself. Even better if prefaced with “the dashing” or “the most adventurous scalawag this side of the Milky Way”. But then you think, perhaps, that the latter moniker would be a bit confusing since you originally coined it with the idea of you being on the _other_ side of the Milky Way – the Earth side. It is, admittedly, not your greatest moment.

You are currently on the _other_ other side of the Milky Way – the not-Earth side – tending to your injuries in the wake of the crash. Behind you lies the smoldering wreckage of your ship, the _Avatar_. Ahead? The vast steppelands of Alternia’s southern continent. If you squint, you think you can see ruins in the distance, begging to be explored.

There’s an entire world of adventures waiting for you out there. What need have you for a ship when you have your pistols? You tie the remains of your ripped shirt over the gash on your thigh and set off. Though it may be nearing sundown, Alternia’s double moons will surely provide enough light for you to travel by.

 

**Aradia: Encounter silly alien**

You are camping outside your latest find, a pre-Condesce temple dedicated to the Horrorterrors, Fluthlu in particular, when you hear shambling outside your tent. This is odd since, by your internal clock, it’s past first moonrise. The hordes of the undead should have gone down with the sun. Psionics ready, whip held taut in your hands, you slowly peer out the tent, and are greeted with—

“Top of the evening to you, ma’am.”

“Hi! You talk funny!”

The silly alien blinks at you in confusion. He (you think it’s male?) moves his squawk flaps wordlessly. The universal translator that you notice he’s wearing now emits a staticky buzz.

“That’s not a bad thing,” you say. “I would love to go to your backwater dirtball to dig up the bones of your peoples!” This is true. The Empire has encountered many species in its territorial expansion. You have often dreamed of defiling the tombs of their deceased. Tastefully. For science. “I’m an archaeologist and xeno-anthropologist,” you add somewhat belatedly in the hopes that he will not take you for, as your hatefriends are wont to say, some sort of death groupie. “And my name’s Aradia,” you say even more belatedly.

“Oh, yes! And I’m Captain Jake English, adventurer extraordinaire, the most ad-- That sounded better in my head.”

You have no idea what he’s talking about, except for the adventure part. You have plenty of _that_ planned. Tonight is, after all, when you planned to raid the Temple of Fluthlu. It was going to happen either way, but you think it will be all the better with a shirtless, dual-pistol wielding alien sidekick! With really tiny shorts!

“Jake!” you call, and it’s a battle not to call him ‘Shorty Shorts’ as you have nicknamed him in your mind. “Let’s raid this temple together!”

 

**Jake: Raid temple with hot alien babe**

You raid the temple with a hot alien babe at your side. Aradia didn’t seem to mind how you hobbled a bit. She said it was fine, “I can protect us both if it comes down to it.” And you had chuckled, thinking it couldn’t possibly be so bad as that.

You were wrong. It was worse.

At first it was as you expected – booby traps here and there, the occasional guardian monster. The crocotaur was interesting if easily dispatched with a smart whip-and-pistol combo. Aradia had smiled as she wrapped the monster’s throat with a lash of her weapon, and you had taken it down with a single shot through the eye.

That was all within ten minutes of entering the temple, mind. That was before the tentacle monstrosities arrived. Aradia spends the next ten minutes glowing strangely and shooting lightning bolts out of her palms. It sends chills down your spine when she floats.

“ _Why_?”

“That’s just how it is, Jake.”

“Yes, but. _Why_?”

“It’s the Temple of Fluthlu! Long thought lost, yadda yadda, heavily guarded, etc. You _do_ know who Fluthlu is, right?”

“Er, no, I’m ashamed to say I don’t.”

“Really? Fluthlu is one of the major deities in ancient Alternian cosmology! He’s an especially grumpy member of the pantheon, probably because he’s been cursed with an eternal flu. I thought for sure you’d have heard of him if you came here to explore.”

It’s come down to this, has it? Your not-really-shameful-just-unpleasant secret is about to be exposed. “The truth of the matter is,” you say. Then you stall, and not only because you had to triple salchow out of the way of an artificial sunlight beam and the zombies it raised. Aradia, gore splattered on her lovely dirt-smudged cheeks, looks at you expectantly, and so of course you must continue. “Truth is, my cousin Jane is royalty.”

“Does that make you royalty as well?”

“Nobility, maybe? Marginally so. We’re quite distant cousins, actually. It’s just that Jane and I were closest in age, so we grew close as friends. But as I was saying, our people are in talks with the Empire, so Jane sent me, as a gesture of good will, to wed a nobletroll.”

“Huh.” Aradia mulls over this turn of events. She looks close to frowning, which is a terrifying prospect. “But then… How did you wind up here all alone? Didn’t you have an escort?”

“I refused the escort.”

Aradia gives you a _look_.

“I can take care of myself just fine! Or did you think me a coddled dandy? A simpering milquetoast child playing at gentlemen’s games? Nay, this captainship was earned through full valor and fisticuffs!” You raise your fists to add more weight to this statement. “Why, if it weren’t for the surprise encounter with that dastardly space squid…”

“Squid?”

“Tentacle thing? Like those monsters we’ve slain, but bigger. Much bigger. And in space.”

“Ooooh, a Horrorterror! Oh my gosh, you met a Horrorterror? What happened?”

“There’s not much to tell,” you say with a shrug. “It reached its frisky fondle-noodles into my ship and smacked me on the bum. Then it just… pushed the ship planetside, I suppose. The angle and velocity were all off for a proper landing.”

“Huh.” Aradia taps her chin in contemplation. “I think that’s a lot to tell!”

“Is it now? I wasn’t able to do anything heroic.”

“Yeah, but the Horrorterrors are known for being capricious. It’s a rare thing to get away from one so easily, and it even molested you! It must’ve really liked your bum to spare you from a fate worse than eternity in a land so far beyond mortal comprehension that it would render you into a gibbering puppet within an instant.”

You blink a couple times in confusion. “Um, thank you?”

“You’re welcome, Captain god-tier bum!”

She smacks you on said divine bum.

 

**Aradia: Re-evaluate flirting techniques**

If there’s one thing you’ve learned about Jake English, it’s that he’s not very observant about relationship matters. Specifically, romance matters. You’ve been flirting with him for the better part of the night and he still hasn’t noticed! After all, you don’t just show off your fighting prowess to _everyone_. You were just so excited to finally meet someone who felt the same way about adventure and tomb raiding as you do.

Sollux, your long-suffering matesprit, only ever goes on raids with you when you give him the barkbeast eyes.

0n0  
2top doiing that.  
0n0  
fuck iit all. fuck my liife.  
0n0  
ii’ll go, okay? why do you do thii2 two me?  
0u0

But Jake is different! You knew right away he would be perfect moirail material, and you’re still convinced that he could be. He _would_ be if he weren’t so ignorant about troll culture despite purportedly coming to take a blueblood for a bonded quadrantmate.

In the end, after strangling the reanimated corpse of a cholerbear and narrowly dodging yet another arrow trap, you make up your mind to let him go. You’ll help him get to the city; you’ll even help him pick a bondmate. But you’ll let him go in the end because he’s the alien equivalent of a blueblood, and you’re a peasant rustie.

“You’ll have some kind of choice, right? I mean, you’re not already engaged, are you?”

“I think so? I was told there were a number of acceptable ladies and gentlemen of a certain… blood caste? Social status, I think they meant.”

“Blue bloods are pretty crazy,” you say as you fry Fluthlu’s skeleton guardians with your psionics. You push aside their remains to open the final chest – the one containing the legendary Stone of Yg’lurk’sthrepf. “I could come with you and help you evaluate them for potential Highblood Rage issues. If you want.”

“Yes, I would definitely feel safer with you watching my back, partner!” Jake flashes you a sparkling flat-toothed smile.

Your bloodpusher does little leaps in your chest. You toss him the Stone of Yg’lurk’sthrepf. “For good luck. And flu protection.”

 

**Jake: Invoke sacred bond of human bro-hood**

“Wait.” You hold out your hand to halt Aradia’s next move, which you assume would be to move away from the defiled altar and maybe blast a hole through the roof of the temple from which to escape. “We just raided a temple together.”

“Yes, that is exactly what we just did. I had fun. Did you?”

“Of course! But that’s not-- I mean, okay, this is a human thing that is pretty important to me because I’m human. After we do something ludicrously badass, which we just did, we are now bros 4 lyfe.” This is something your bro Dirk taught you, and you choose to take it at face value despite the fact that Dirk is known for being so ironic it is literally off the charts. “We have to do the bro-fist.”

“O…kay? Sure, I will do the human bro-fist with you.”

You hold out your fist. Your eyes meet Aradia’s. Determination is shining through from your very pores, you’re sure of it. Aradia gingerly raises her own fist and you…

Bump.

“It is done,” you say with as much solemnity as you can muster, “and we are bonded in bro-hood.”

“ _Bonded_?” Aradia’s lips hang slack in shock. Her cheeks flush a fetching dark red.

“Yes!” You nod vigorously. “From now on we are the best of buds, the chummiest of pals. We’ll have each other’s backs in any fight and raid a great many tombs all over the galaxy! For xeno-anthropology.”

The more you say, the more Aradia’s eyes widen. You’re about to question her, ask if you’ve done something inappropriate, when the walls begin to rumble.

 

**Jane: Meet your intergalactic in-law**

Jake relates to you the tale of how he escaped the Temple of Fluthlu with Aradia, a troll girl he’d met shortly after crash landing on Alternia. The temple crumbled behind them as she carried him in her arms and flew high above the land. The Stone of Yg’lurk’sthrepf that he’d clutched to his chest during their daring getaway now hangs there on a leather cord.

It’s an interesting story, and truth be told, you were never really expecting much to come from the political match of Jake and a troll. You sent him to Alternia mostly because it seemed like he could use the adventure… That and you’d heard they had blue girls. It was a favor to Jake, wasn’t it? Of the possible outcomes you’d imagined, Jake hooking up with a red girl was not one of them.

Jake ushers in his lady friend when he has finished his tale. He introduces her to you and your council members.

“This is, er, my conciliatory troll-wife. Did you know that bro-fists are Alternian marriage proposals?”

“Hello, humans! I’ve accompanied my moirail-husband to his home planet to research your various death rites!”

“She’s an anthropologist.”

“And a tomb raider-- I mean archaeologist!”

“She means archaeologist!”

“…Yes, what he said! I raid tombs respectfully and for science!”

Your smile is a bit watery, but you offer them cake regardless.


End file.
